Facebook 'Shared Activity' Plugin Offers Users More Control

Facebook today unveiled a new plugin that provides users with more control over how their non-Facebook activity is shared on the social network.

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In recent months, Facebook has made a big push to expand beyond the confines of Facebook.com via its "Open Graph." Sign in to Spotify with your Facebook account and automatically broadcast your listening habits to the Facebook news feed, for example.

Not everyone, however, wants to share their every non-Facebook move with hundreds of their closest "friends." Services like Spotify have provided users with the ability to opt-out of sharing their activity on Facebook, but it's an all or nothing proposition. Today, however, Facebook unveiled a new plugin that provides users with more control over how their non-Facebook activity is shared on the social network.

With the Shared Activity plugin, websites can let visitors control the activity they share to Facebook directly from the site's Facebook Web app.

"From the plugin on sites such as Airbnb, people can set the default Facebook audience for activity shared from your app, or manage the settings for stories previously published to Facebook, including selecting an audience or removing it altogether," Facebook said in a blog post.

Translation: Feel free to share with friends when you're listening to something your friends might consider cool, but opt out of sharing when you're blasting the Justin Bieber or One Direction. Or, only share your teeny bopper tendencies with a select group of like-minded Facebook friends.

"This gives people another way to control their sharing on Facebook, in addition to the controls on Facebook in App Settings, inline on timeline, and Activity Log," Facebook said.

The Messenger for Android 2.0 update adds a new design for conversations, the ability to swipe left to see who's available to chat, and the option to send and receive texts from within Messenger on select Android phones.

The Facebook for Android app, meanwhile, will be updated to include many of the same features added to Messenger. New additions include: a new button in upper right corner of the News Feed quickly shows who's available to message; new design for conversations in Messages; an alert that shows which friends are active; and bug fixes.

Chloe Albanesius has been with PCMag.com since April 2007, most recently as Executive Editor for News and Features. Prior to that, she worked for a year covering financial IT on Wall Street for Incisive Media. From 2002 to 2005, Chloe covered technology policy for The National Journal's Technology Daily in Washington, DC. She has held internships at NBC's Meet the Press, washingtonpost.com, the Tate Gallery press office in London, Roll Call, and Congressional Quarterly. She graduated with a bachelor's degree in journalism from American University...
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